American historians of the early national period, argues Eileen Ka-May Cheng, grappled with objectivity, professionalism, and other modern issues to a greater degree than their successors in later generations acknowledge. Her extensive readings of antebellum historians show that by the 1820s, a small but influential group of practitioners had begun to develop many of the doctrines and concerns that undergird contemporary historical practice. "The Plain and Noble Garb of Truth" challenges the entrenched notion that America s first generations of historians were romantics or propagandists...